


The Angel Room - Vignettes from the Bunker: "Breakfast"

by CatherineinNB



Series: The Angel Room [14]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Breakfast, Bunker Fic, Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, Episode: s05e04 The End, Episode: s14e10 Nihilism, Fluff, Gen, Grace - Freeform, Low Power in Heaven, Referenced End!Verse Castiel, Season/Series 14, Season/Series 14 Spoilers, Weakened Angels, human angels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 00:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17991176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatherineinNB/pseuds/CatherineinNB
Summary: After depleting her grace, Makael's stuck at the Bunker until the artifact that opens the way back home recharges itself. And she's mostly human, so she wakes up ... hungry. Fortunately, Dean's making pancakes.Author's Note: This takes place after "Nihilism," and before "Damaged Goods." I've decided to do a series of vignettes from around the Bunker as Makael recovers. Fun and fluff, but I'm also using it as an opportunity to address fandom chatter/concerns. In this installment, Makael spills the beans about how the power drain in Heaven is affecting angels--something I've floated as a theory about why Castiel can no longer land a punch, which I think was validated by the events in "Lebanon" (I'm gonna have so much fun with that ep!). I'm still waaay behind with the current episodes because, well, depression is a motherfucker. Anyhoo, enjoy!





	The Angel Room - Vignettes from the Bunker: "Breakfast"

_**Breakfast:**_  
Makael wakes from her second sleep gradually, without the start of _something wrong_ that happened when she sensed Death.

It’s still disorienting to slide back into a state of consciousness. That heaviness she noticed as she fell asleep lingers, seeming to pull her vessel down into the twin mattress, and the void in her awareness of time is … perturbing, to say the least—especially for a being who can recall with perfect clarity every other millisecond of their existence.

She breathes out slowly, reminding herself that this is a normal process for most creatures in the universe. She stretches, reclaiming control over her limbs. The panic that’s started to coil around her gut recedes as she focuses on the physical awareness of her body. She closes her eyes for a brief moment, and then sits up, scrubbing her hands over her face. She inhales deeply, and the scent of coffee fills her nostrils.

… it smells incredible.

This is surprising, and Makael realizes, after a moment, that she’s still got a lot of grace to replenish. Scents typically are something she registers without much affect. They’re information, nothing more and nothing less. She usually finds coffee … biting, nutty, acerbic to her nose. Not _incredible_.

She sighs.

A few minutes later, she’s followed the smell to its source in the kitchen.

Sam and Jack are sitting on opposite sides of the table, each having pulled up a stool. They’re in the middle of what appears to be a serious conversation: Sam’s eyebrows are scrunched, and Jack’s listening with a frown on his lips and his most earnest face on. Dean’s at the stovetop with his back to them, and is cooking something on a griddle that smells … _dammit_. Delicious. Makael’s mouth starts to water.

Sam’s eyes shift from Jack to Makael, and Jack turns to see what’s caught his attention. A broad smile breaks over his face. “Good morning,” he says, warmly.

“Cas told us about your depleted grace,” says Sam. “Did you sleep okay?”

“I think so? I don’t really have anything to compare it to.” Makael frowns as she thinks about it, and takes a seat next to Jack. “I was certainly unconscious.”

Sam smiles, the kind that quirks up and then turns down at the corners as he tries to suppress it.

“Short stack?” asks Dean, sliding a plate in front of Jack. It’s piled with perfectly round, fluffy pancakes. “I made extra. Cas said you might be hungry.”

Jack eagerly grabs the syrup from the table and begins pouring copious amounts over the pancakes before him. Makael’s stomach decides to take that moment to growl very loudly. She can feel her insides squeezing and shifting, and looks down with wide eyes.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” says Dean, with a wry nod, before he turns back to the stovetop.

“How about coffee?” asks Sam, raising his eyebrows in inquiry.

“Yes.” Makael nods vigorously. “I never realized how good it smells until now.”

Sam smiles, then gets up and grabs one of the white and red china mugs from a cupboard and pads over to the coffee machine and pours her a cup. “How do you like yours?” He deposits the cup in front of Makael.

“I … don’t know.” Makael frowns. “I’ve never had any before.”

“Well, Dean and I take it black—”

“Don’t,” interjects Jack, urgently. “It’s awful that way.”

“Mm. Yeah, and _you_ take a little bit of coffee with your sugar,” says Sam, with gentle humor, even as he heads over to the fridge and grabs a container of cream. “Try a sip black first, Makael. If you don’t like it, you can add cream and sugar.”

“Told you,” says Jack, when Makael takes a sip and makes a face. He slides the sugar her way, and she takes it gratefully.

“What is it about angels and sugar, man?” says Dean as he slides three more plates stacked with pancakes onto the table and takes a seat next to Sam. “I mean, I’ve even caught Cas sneaking some Crunch Cookie Crunch. That stuff will rot your teeth just looking at it. And this is _me_ saying that.”

Sam makes a low noise of agreement as he butters his pancakes.

Jack looks at Makael and rolls his eyes. “Don’t listen to them. If you brush your teeth regularly, they won’t rot because of what you eat. Cas told me all about dental hygiene.” When Makael looks blank, Jack says encouragingly, “I’ll show you how after breakfast.”

“Thank you,” says Makael gravely, then takes another, tentative sip of her coffee. This time, with the cream and sugar, it’s heavenly. She lets out an inarticulate sound of contentment.

Sam’s eyes widen briefly, and he’s suddenly very busy with spreading butter over his pancakes.

Dean snorts and digs into his. “Got it how you like it?” he asks Makael with a sly quirk of his lips.

“Yes. I’ve never been able to taste something … all at once like this before. As an angel, it’s all just the individual—”

“—molecules. Yeah, Cas said something similar before,” says Dean. Then he frowns. “I wonder why he likes that cereal so damn much, then.”

“It’s probably because of the power drain in heaven,” she says, putting down her mug after another sip. She rolls drink slowly over her tongue, relishing the way the different taste buds pick up subtly different flavors of the coffee, and closing her eyes briefly so she can focus on it.

Sam chokes on his pancakes, and as she looks at him in alarm Dean claps him on the back, smirking.

“Power drain?” asks Jack.

“The way the power drain in heaven from the lack of angels is affecting us.” Makael takes her knife, copying Sam as she takes butter from the plate in the center of the table and spreads it over her pancakes.

“Wait, what?” Dean’s focused now, his green gaze like lasers on Makael.

“Castiel hasn’t talked to you about this?” Makael feels suddenly like she’s spilled something she shouldn’t have shared. Was Castiel keeping _this_ a secret from the Winchesters, too? She hesitates.

“Nuh-uh. You don’t get to clam up now.”

The laserlike green stare narrows, and Makael feels suddenly pinned down, which confirms her earlier suspicions that Dean Winchester in intense mode is a hundred times more intimidating in person than he is over the screen. And he can be pretty intimidating on-screen.

“Um.” Makael swallows. “I—”

“Dude, let her eat her pancakes.” Sam comes to her rescue, giving his brother side-eye, and pushing the syrup toward Makael. She takes it gratefully and, deciding that Jack seems to have the right idea about these things, she pours a similar amount of syrup over her pancakes, taking the opportunity to consider how she should continue with the conversation.

Dean gives her a long look as she busies herself with cutting up the fluffy circles, then grunts and goes back to his breakfast. Even his eating style, Makael realizes after a moment, is aggressive: stabbing the stack of pancakes with his fork to pin them in place, then sawing at them vigorously with his knife; shoving large chunks into his mouth; chewing like they’re alive and just _might_ decide to crawl back out and run if he doesn’t obliterate them with his teeth.

She realizes, after he levels a flat look at her, that she’s staring, and focuses back on her own pancakes.

The first bite is a revelation: the fluffy texture juxtaposed against the gooeyness of the syrup; its sweetness hitting against the salt of the butter; the pleasant warmth still lingering in the dough from the hot griddle. There are so many things happening at once that, for a moment, she’s overwhelmed and can only sit, frozen, mid-chew.

Sam’s brow crinkles as he notices. “You okay?”

“Uh-hmuh,” she says through a full mouth. She chews again, and swallows reflexively.  
Swallowing is another experience in and of itself. She can feel the food going down her throat, to just about her collarbone, and then … the sensation disappears. She can’t feel the food moving anymore. “Is that normal?” she asks, feeling a flare of panic.

After they get her to explain herself, Sam reassures her that yes, it is in fact entirely normal. But she should probably take smaller bites, he tells her, amusement sparkling in his hazel eyes.

Halfway through eating, she realizes that she can alternate bites of pancakes with sips of coffee, and oh, isn’t _that_ a heavenly revelation?

And when an angel talks about heavenly revelations, it’s not an exaggeration or a metaphor.

Sam does his quirk-up-turn-down smile again at her words.

When she tells Dean that he must be a _very_ good cook, he merely grunts as he scrapes the surface of his plate vigorously with his fork to collect the last crumbs and remnants of syrup—but the tips of his ears turn slightly pink, which she decides is a good thing.

“So,” he says, as she takes the last bite of pancake, savoring every last crumb of it all, “power drain? Heaven? Spill.”

Makael takes a breath to reply, but Castiel appears in the doorway, and Dean’s eyes turn to him as he makes his way into the kitchen.

“Even better,” he says, letting his displeasure show as he fixes his gaze on the angel. “Cas, what’s up with the power drain in heaven affecting you?”

Castiel stops dead, then slides onto the stool to Makael’s right, and gives her a long look.  
Yeah. He _had_ been keeping this from the Winchesters, too.

“You know,” she says, acerbically, “it would be a lot easier for all of you if you didn’t constantly keep secrets from each other.” She glares at both Castiel _and_ Dean as she says this, and Sam looks between the three of them with confusion as Jack’s eyes widen. He gets up quickly, and starts clearing dishes from the table. The tips of Dean’s ears turn red again, and this time it’s definitely not a good thing. He levels a glare at Makael; this time, she meets it and glares right back.

Castiel sighs, breaking the standoff. “It’s of no real import,” he says, shaking his head.

“Yeah, you don’t get to decide what’s ‘of real import’ when it comes to your … health,” says Dean, but it’s lacking his earlier heat, now that he’s been reminded of his current omissions.

Castiel looks heavenward briefly before he continues. “You may have noticed,” he begins, “that as of late my abilities have been somewhat … limited.”

Sam frowns. “I … guess? I mean, we’ve been encountering some really heavy stuff recently. I just thought it was … you know, above your pay-grade, Cas.”

“That’s certainly part of it,” says Castiel. “There are some things that I would never have been able to do—for example, my grace would never have been able to help Jack when he was sick.” He looks at Jack as he says this, and Jack gives him a reassuring smile from the counter, where he’s running hot water into the sink to soak the dishes.

“Okay,” says Dean, after a moment, but the word is a question.

Castiel sighs again. “But other things … I’m more easily injured in fights. I have less overall strength. And it is going to take quite some time for Makael’s grace to replenish itself.”

“And this is all because heaven’s running low on juice?” asks Dean.

“I’m not exactly sure. I haven’t really talked to another angel about this until yesterday.” He slants a glance at Makael, who finds herself colouring, which annoys her all over again.

“I didn’t know it was a secret!”

“Mm.” Castiel raises a brow slightly, but turns his focus back to Dean as Jack slides back into his seat, doing his best to be inconspicuous. “At first I thought it was because of my wings, the injury they sustained when I Fell. But it’s more than that. The low power in heaven … it’s my best theory as of now.”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” says Makael. “I mean, if we’re the batteries that power heaven, and heaven is so low on power that it the lights are constantly flickering, then it’s going to be constantly drawing on _us_ , whether we’re there or not. Hence, not as much personal power left over for us to use.” Suddenly her eyes widen. “Oh. _Oh!_ ”

“What?” asks Dean.

“I just—Endverse!Cas. Holy shit!”

“ _What_ -verse Cas?”

Makael takes a breath. “Sorry. I just—sometimes I forget that you guys don’t—okay. When Zachariah sent your forward in time during the Apocalypse? That episode was called ‘The End.’”

“ … and?” Sam looks completely lost.

“Right. So, uh, different versions of all of you? The fans will differentiate by using a descriptor with an exclamation mark in front of your name. So, Demon!Dean, Soulless!Sam.”

“Ooookay.” Sam exchanges a glance with Dean, who rolls his eyes.

“Fans are weird. We already knew that. Uh, Becky?”

“God, thanks for bringing _that_ up.” Sam rolls his shoulders uncomfortably.

Dean shrugs, bares his teeth in an apologetic grimace. “Sorry. So, right. Endverse!Cas is the Cas from the universe that existed in the episode called ‘The End.’ Got it. So what?”

“So. That Cas was almost completely human.” Makael gives Dean an intense look. “And the angels?” she prompts.

Dean frowns, and then suddenly his eyes widen as well. “All the angels were gone,” he says, quietly. “Woah.”

“What do you mean, all the angels were gone?” asks Jack.

“Cas—that Cas—didn’t know where they went to,” says Dean. “They just all fucked off after Lucifer won the battle with Michael. Completely abandoned earth and heaven and … everything. And after they were all gone, he—Endverse!Cas—started losing his powers. Couldn’t fly, even though there’d been no Great Fall. Couldn’t heal. He said he broke his ankle or his foot or something at one point and was laid up for months. I mean, he could still do some stuff—like, he knew I wasn’t the me from then, I was a past version of me, but—in almost every other way, he was human.”

Castiel’s brow furrows as he looks at Dean. Makael wonders how much Dean has shared about this with the others before. The Endverse was pretty awful.

“Oh. Oh, wow.” Sam’s eyes are huge, and so are Jack’s, as they both catch on. “So, you two are becoming … more human? As there are fewer and fewer angels?”

Makael and Castiel exchange a glance. “I … it seems that is likely the case,” says Castiel, after a moment. Then he lifts a shoulder. “There are worse things than becoming human. I’ve already experienced it once.”

“You should have told us, Cas,” says Dean. Makael can see the protectiveness rising up in him. The smiles internally. That fierce loyalty and love is one of the things she likes most about Dean. “I mean,” he continues, “you’re becoming more vulnerable. That’s something we need to know.”

Castiel fixes him with a dry look. “I can still take care of myself, Dean,” he says, and then changes the subject as Dean rolls his eyes. “Had heaven fallen in the … Endverse?” he asks. “If the angels weren’t there to sustain it, it should have given way, released all the souls to earth.”

“I don’t know.” Dean shakes his head. “I mean, it coulda happened. Most of humanity had fallen to the Croatoan virus, and future me was so busy with that and tracking down Lucifer—I don’t even know if an uptick in restless spirits would have registered for him.”

“Good point,” says Castiel, with a wry nod. “If it didn’t, though—if heaven there was intact? That might be useful information for us to know. If the angels were gone but heaven stayed intact there, finding out why could help us with our current situation. I know that among the many issues that we are currently facing, this one is on something of a back burner, but—”

“—but it’s still important,” interjects Sam.

“Yeah. Billions of lost souls on earth? Not something we wanna have happen,” says Dean.

“When I get back to the other earth, I’ll take a look into the episode and see if there’s any more information available,” offers Makael.

Sam nods. “All right. I’m off to the archive to go …” He throws a glance at Dean, trails off.

“Check and see if you can find anything to get the nasty hitchhiker outta my noggin?” says Dean with forced lightness, and that little half-smile that doesn’t quite meet his eyes.

Sam lets out a soft huff of air, returns Dean’s not-smile with one of his own. “Uh, yeah.”

“Thanks, Sammy.”

“Of course.” Sam rests a light hand on Dean’s shoulder as Jack looks at him with worry creasing his brow. Sam releases Dean’s shoulder and pours himself another mug of coffee on his way out of the kitchen. Black. Makael shakes her head.

“All right, kid,” says Dean. “I’ll wash the dishes. Your turn to dry. Thanks for clearing the table.”

The worry clears from Jack’s face at the praise, and Cas smiles like the proud dad he is. Then he turns to Makael as the two of them busy themselves at the sink. “Come with me for a moment?”

She nods, fixes herself another cup of coffee before she follows him to the War Room, finishing off the pot. She can feel the caffeine working on her body, and feels alert and fully awake now.

“I’m sorry,” she says as they approach the map table, before Castiel can say anything. “I didn’t know you hadn’t told anyone about our powers. I assumed it was just one of those things the writers hadn’t bothered to address; you know, one of those behind-the-scenes conversations that we don’t get to see. I shouldn’t have.”

Castiel shakes his head as he takes a seat. “It’s fine. I should have said something before now. I guess it’s just happened so gradually that … it’s been easier to ignore it.”

Makael nods as she grabs a seat on the same side of the table. She understands that.

“Do you mind if I take a look?” says Castiel, asking if he can check on the status of her grace.

“Of course not.”

Castiel’s gaze goes unfocused as he pulls up his angelic vision. He sighs when his eyes focus again. “It’s still very low, Makael. It’s going to be a while before you’re fully restored.”

Makael nods. “I figured as much. The food this morning … I was hungry, and it was _delicious_.”

Castiel smiles.

“But, fortunately, the artifact will recover much more quickly than I will, so by this time tomorrow, I should be able to head—”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” says Castiel. “I realize you’re planning on returning back to your … other home, but … things have changed. _You’ve_ changed, Makael. And … I’ve talked to Sam and Dean, and we’re wondering if you might reconsider going back. You have a keen mind, and an incredible talent for spellwork—and you’ve just proven to us that you can fight, _and_ that you’re willing to face down Michael if things go … badly.”

Makael takes a breath and sits back in her chair. She casts her gaze slowly around the War Room before she looks at Castiel. “You … you want me to stay here?”

He nods. “Yes, we do. And … personally, I’d feel better about you staying here, even if it’s just while you recover your grace. Being as close to human as you currently are can be … disconcerting for an angel. And I’ve been where you are—well.” He stops himself, and lets out a huff of amused air. “Further, I suppose. I’ve been fully human. So I can help if you have any questions. And so can Sam and Dean, of course. And Jack.” He smiles at the last part, then frowns when he takes in Makael’s expression. “Sister?” he asks.

Makael sniffles and wipes the back of her hand across her cheek. “I wish I could blame this on the lack of grace,” she says thickly, “but I’ve cried more since meeting all of you than … ever.” She lets out a strangled laugh that ends in a shaky breath. “I haven’t … _belonged_ anywhere in a very long time, Brother,” she says, barely above a whisper.

Castiel’s expression softens. “You can belong here,” he says, quietly. “With as much freedom as you need, to stay or to go.”

“Thank you,” says Makael. She lets out another shaky breath. “I think I’d like to stay. At least for now?”

Castiel smiles, nods. He tilts his head, and his blue eyes sparkle. “So, you had your first meal this morning. How do you like pancakes?”

Makael’s expression lights up. “Oh, Brother,” she begins. “They are _heavenly_.”

**END SCENE.**


End file.
